The best way to navigate a recession and job security is to make your boss happy. Our bosses are the ones who determine our career’s future and has leverage over us. Therefore, making them happy influences their decision when it comes to doing layoffs.
Recessions are not fun for anybody. However, they are an inevitable part of the economic cycle. I’m personally going through the fear of layoffs, myself. Therefore, I’m doing everything I can to protect my job from layoffs and making sure I add as much value as I am to the company.
I figured out ways to actually save the company money. I saved them $25k+ in a single month, which may not be a lot of money but savings are still important during economic recessions. Saving money is a premium during economic recessions.
I knew my boss is already under a ton of pressure already because recessions are no fun for anybody. Therefore, I did anything I could to make sure that his boss is happy because that’s how my boss will keep his job. Is there a chance that I’m working myself to the bone for no benefit?
Absolutely. However, the idea isn’t to ensure your job is safe from layoffs with 100% probability. The idea is to lower the risk of layoffs as much as possible. No one can ensure their jobs are safe 100%. It’s completely dependent on the profits the company generates.
However, that doesn’t mean you can’t influence to prepare for a recession and job security.
Recession and Job Security: 9 Ways to Protect Your Job
Below are 9 ways that I’m pursuing to protect my job from layoffs, myself. I’ve gone through 8 years of my career and my experience dealing with a recession and job security is limited. However, that doesn’t mean that I’m not doing everything I can to protect my job from layoffs.
Economic crashes and recessions happen suddenly. There’s a high chance that unemployment goes up dramatically and quickly. The best time to prepare is before a recession happens.
1) Make Your Boss Happy
Whether we like it or not, our bosses determine our career’s trajectory and future more than anyone else in the company. Not the CEO, CFO, or the higher up executives. It’s our direct bosses that have the greatest impact to our career.
When it comes to managing the recession and job security. ensuring your boss is happy is a great way to prevent layoffs. It doesn’t have to be through getting them to like you by taking them to lunch and the like. I personally get my boss to like me by providing value.
Not only do I get along with my coworkers and cause little trouble, I make sure to save as much money as I can for the company. Any little savings adds up over the months to tremendous amounts. Now is the time to renegotiate with vendors, ask for a discount, and haggle on pricing.
$1 in a recession becomes much more valuable than $1 during the boom times.
2) Recession and Job Security: Impress Higher Ups
Although your direct boss has the greatest impact and influence over your career, it still doesn’t hurt to impress higher ups who may even make the ultimate decision on who to lay off. Now’s the time to go to the company meetings, pay attention, and smoothly network with the higher ups.
The decision makers are the last ones to get let go. In a proper army, the decision makers are the brainiacs who are the most experienced and know how to utilize resources to their maximum potential. Therefore, the army does everything in their power to protect them.
It works the same way in business. The ones in the frontlines will be the first ones to get laid off. And the executives and the higher ups will be the last ones to get laid off. For the vast majority of us, we are not in the C-suite who makes the ultimate layoff decision.
Therefore, it’s not a bad thing to get in their good graces to manage the recession and job security. It’s never a bad time to have executives as your allies.
3) Do Extra Work
Now is not the time to complain. Now is the time to volunteer to do extra work. Managing the recession and job security means signing up for additional work even if it means working additional hours. The economic crash of ’07-09 had many experienced professionals who took entry level jobs.
There were many “Managing Directors” who took on “Analyst” jobs because they had no other choice to pay their bills with. Managing the recession and job security means doing extra work even if there is no benefit or upside to your career.
During times of desperation, it’s not a bad idea to give more than what you get in return. It’s doing what we have to do to survive. Our pride and ego has nothing to do with it when it comes to getting things done and conducting business.
I’m personally working weekends and nights without complaints to prepare for an impending recession.
4) Read the Room on Asking for Raises
I generally favor employees asking and getting the raises they deserve. Especially if they’re high performers and provide high value to the company. However, that’s not how it works when worrying about a recession and job security.
Bosses are generally happy to support employees but when the employees get out of hand and overplay their hand, they’re quick to punish them just as quickly. During recessionary times, it’s not the time to ask for raises because the company is suffering.
The employees can’t be doing better than the company who pays them their salary in the first place. When there are layoff announcements, it’s not the time to overplay your hand, which is pretty weak to begin with if you are dependent on the paycheck.
There’s a time and place for demanding for raises but during bad economic times is not one of them.
5) Keep in Contact with Past Coworkers
I personally do a bad job of keeping in contact with past coworkers. If I leave the place of employment, I usually stop contact with any of them. Nothing personal but it’s difficult for me to keep in contact with old friends when there are new friends to meet.
There’s only a limited amount of hours in the day for me. However, my mistake shouldn’t be everyone else’s mistakes. A recession and job security means keeping in contact with past coworkers who may be working at companies who can offer employment opportunities.
Just because one industry is losing money doesn’t mean another industry can’t be doing well financially. It also doesn’t cost anything to keep in contact with prior coworkers. A simple text goes a long way. Relationships are what can make or break job security.
I personally have not been doing a good job at maintaining relationships. It’s best to learn from my mistakes.
6) Say Yes More
Now is not the time to say no to your employer and company. Now is the time to say, “yes sir, may I have another sir!”. Even if they are abusive towards you. I personally have never said no in 2023 of any requests that my higher ups or bosses had of me.
It creates the subtle goodwill that I am someone who can be depended upon. There may be no upside at the end. However, upside is not what matters when thinking of a recession and job security. Protecting the capital that I built is what matters.
I may still end up on the layoff list at the end because I am generally not good at keeping and maintaining relationships with coworkers, even current ones. Which is perfectly OK with me. I would rather try my best to avoid layoffs and fail than never try at all.
There’s a reason employees feel more loyal towards an employer during a recession.
7) Save Money for the Company
No matter how much money the company is making, saving money for the company never gets old. Companies always love it when you find ways to buy the same product but just at a cheaper price. Now’s the time to go into overdrive. Cash becomes that much more valuable during a recession.
Especially to a business and your boss, saving money is always a good thing. Recession and job security means going above and beyond for your employer. The ones who keep their jobs through a recession will come out the other side the best that they’ve ever been.
I personally went into overdrive and saved as much money as I could for my company. Although I could have still ended up on the layoff list, I was perfectly OK with that. It’s better to have tried everything you can to thrive through the recession and fail than not have tried at all.
Recession and job security isn’t a fun time for anyone. But doing everything you can for your family’s future is a valuable trait.
8) Recession and Job Security: Move to a Mission Critical Department
Unfortunately, during a recession, luxury goods and departments are cut first. The ones who don’t generate revenue or knows how to cut costs will be the first ones to get cut. The support departments are generally the first ones to get cut in a recession.
Recruiters in particular are heavily affected during a recession because companies are trying to reduce headcount, not increase headcount. The recession and job security is better for employees in sales. Their bonuses are not going to get cut, even during recessions.
At a time the company needs sales, they will invest their resources in departments that bring them the most amount of money. Sales are mission critical department that the company needs, in good times and bad. The employees who get paid the most are the ones who touch the company’s most valuable resource the most.
Which is money.
9) As a Last Resort, Offer a Pay Cut
I personally don’t like taking a pay cut and don’t even support taking a pay cut for less stress. However, desperate times call for desperate measures. Now, the timing has to be perfect. There’s no sense in offering to take a pay cut when the company wasn’t even instigating pay cuts of layoffs in the first place.
And it completely depends on how the company decides to manage their workforce through the tough times. The 12000 employees at Google weren’t even offered a chance for the employees to offer to take a pay cut in exchange for continued employment.
Google just shut them out and cut the laid off employees out of their lives. However, some companies’ processes are different and they will actually go through with an exit interview, final walk through, and the like.
In which case, that is when you can offer to take a pay cut to navigate the recession and job security. They might still lay you off at the end. However, at the very least, you gave it your best shot.
Recession and Job Security is a Common Theme
Whether we like it or not, recessions WILL happen in our lifetime. Each recession is unique to the causes and the run-up. However, what’s inevitable is that they will happen. A 70-year old person can expect to go through about 11 recessions in their lifetime.
However, that doesn’t even include 2 recessions that they already went through by the time that they were 20 years old. So it’s about 8 – 9 recessions that a person will go through where they have to worry about a recession and job security.
Therefore, it’s best to prepare for the inevitable and make choices today before the recession actually happens. The best time to prepare for a rainstorm is by buying an umbrella before it rains. By the time it rains, it’ll have been too late to have an umbrella.
Recessions are one of the best opportunities in the world to build real wealth. However, it only works when we navigate through the recession well. The first step is to realize how the recession and job security game works and play the game accordingly.
Whether we like it or not, we will have to live through recessions and prolonged periods of uncertainty. I personally highly dislike uncertainty but it is a necessity when it comes to jobs, building wealth, and making money. Recession and job security is not fun but inevitable.
The great part is that we are not sitting ducks and still can take control of our lives.
Recession and Job Security: My Story
2022 – 2023 period was the first real recession and job security worries that I personally had to go through. 2020 recession only lasted 2 months so it doesn’t count. The 2018 scare was only a scare but not a full blown recession. The 2022 – 2023 period had heightened risks.
Therefore, I did everything possible to prepare myself for a possible job cut and layoff news that I had to go through. I saved my company as much money as I possibly could. I saved as much money as I could, myself, so that I had the liquidity to weather additional asset price declines.
Then I stopped going out to eat and stopped purchasing anything. A recession is one of the best opportunities to build wealth for the ones who have the money to build in the bull market that follows a recession. I started side hustles and used weekends to figure out how to earn more money.
I made sure that I didn’t make any enemies at my place of employment. Any additional work that I could do for my boss, I voluntarily said yes to because I wanted to be a team player. I also never complained about anything at work. If something discomforted me, I just let it go.
Recessions are trying times and the ones who get through it well are the ones who come out obscenely stronger than anyone else in the entire world. This is how the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. The widening wealth inequality widens even further after a recession.
Because the smart ones know how to navigate the recession and job security well.
Recession and Job Security: Come Out Stronger at the End
We can’t let a good recession go to waste. Although it is risky during the recession on navigating through the corporate bureaucracy of keeping your job, the rewards are enormous. The best investments are when there is substantial upside without taking on additional risk.
As long as you take the recession and job security seriously, there’s a way to come out stronger at the end than ever before. It will be difficult, time consuming, and complicated. However, the results are worth the effort. Our money is too important to ignore.
Recessions are not fun for anybody. There’s job losses, divorces, and bankruptcies that happen during a recession. However, remaining patient throughout they years is key. The 2022 – 2023 recession took 2 – 3 years to fully play out. That is an obscene amount of time.
However, just remaining patient and taking it day by day is key in ensuring the financial success of our family and ourselves. The biggest opportunities happen during a recession and not a bull market. That’s when we actually realize and seal the deal for our family’s financial future.
Navigating through the recession and job security is complicated but well worth it. It was frustrating to have to wait a year+ for the recession to fully play out but it was well worth the effort, for me, personally. There’s always a way to come out a winner at the end.
We just have to make the right strategic decisions to do so.
Recession and Job Security: 9 Ways to Protect Your Job Shortlist
- Make your boss happy
- Recession and job security: impress higher ups
- Do extra work
- Read the room on asking for raises
- Keep in contact with past coworkers
- Say yes more
- Save money for the company
- Recession and job security: move to a critical department
- As a last resort, offer a pay cut
